Wireless communications are comprised of two or more communications terminals communicating via a communications link. In turn, the communications link may comprise one or more intervening servers. These intervening servers perform connection and routing services between various endpoints in the communications link. For example, a smart-phone communications terminal may have an air interface to a cellular tower in a local cellular sector, which in turn may have one or more servers managing a plurality of communications links. The one or more servers may in turn connect via a landline to a core network which has one or more servers managing another plurality of communications links. The core network forwards communications to a destination communications terminal.
The destination communications terminal may be another mobile device, such as a smart-phone or tablet computer connected by a similar communications link comprising an air interface and a cell sector ultimately connecting to the core network. Alternatively, a destinations terminal may be a data server such as an electronic mail (“e-mail”) server, or an internet web site.
Communications links typically comprise a downlink, where a communications terminal receives data, and an uplink, where a communications terminal transmits data. Whereas in the past, the volume of data to send via uplink was limited to data requests and relatively compact voice data, increasingly uplink transmissions contain relatively large data requests. For example, the present popularity of social media, non-voice, data communications results in uplinks of photos and videos captured by a mobile communications terminal. By way of another example, video-calls are increasing in popularity which comprises both an audio component and a video component.
Accordingly there is an opportunity to self optimize networks to meet the present day data volume challenges. One way is to perform link adaptations with a link adaptation routine to maintain data speeds as specified by Quality of Service (“QoS”) settings. Another way is to increase signal power with a power control routine. However, where both a link adaptation routine and a power control routine are present, their optimizations may interfere with each other resulting in a non-optimized communications link.
Furthermore, with the proper knowledge of the type of application and/or application-specific quality, the system can make better educated decisions about whether to increase the power beyond a certain limit, which has implications in overall system interference and device battery life. Having the proper knowledge of applications, network and device conditions enables a better approach to self organizing networks in which each individual device can be adjusted independently based on operator defined rules.